Achievement won on 27 Aug 11TA Score for this game: 3,110
Posted on 28 August 11 at 00:34, Edited on 29 August 12 at 17:42

This solution has 50 positive votes and 5 negative votes. Please log in to vote.

First things first. There are 3 Excavators and each name of the excavator itself corresponds to a certain area on the map either Tunnel 11, The Biodome and Tunnel 6. The power must be turned on for any of the excavators to begin to come out.

At one point while playing, a lady over an intercom will announce that either excavator Omicron, Epsilon, or Pi is going to cause decompression in Tunnel 11, Biodome or Tunnel 6. Omicron is to Tunnel 11, Epsilon is to The Biodome and Pi is to Tunnel 6. Listen very carefully to the lady over the intercom. The last thing that you want is to risk your life trying to hack an excavator you already have hacked.

There is no certain amount of waves that the excavators come out in and there is no certain order, you can get the same excavator 3 times in a row if you're unlucky enough. I will tell you that I have played for this achievement about 10 times and the 1st excavator has always come through rounds 3-8. If you TURN ON THE POWER on round 3, there is a chance the lady will say that an area is about to be breached, it has happened to me 3 times.

When the lady finally does announce that an excavator is going to cause decompression I suggest that one person go for the hacker immediately, usually its the person with the best weapon so that they can protect themselves. If you need a place to camp I would suggest the right and left sides of the pyramid, they are easy to cover and it is really close to the hacker room. In order to get the achievement, the SAME (I cant stress that enough) person has to hack all three of the consoles at the start room, the consoles are pretty obvious, when activated they are green and flashing, simply walk up to them and hold x until the hack is done. Even though the same person has to hack all 3 consoles, all present players get the achievement when the last console is hacked.

NOTE: Do not shoot explosives in any of the rooms that the hacker can be found in and don't shoot any explosives in the start room, that includes grenades. You may be wondering why, well its because if you accidentally blow out a window, the room will no longer have air in it, therefore you cant have the hacker in those rooms because you have no space suit when having the hacker and you cant breath and you'll slowly lose oxygen until you go down.

SUGGESTIONS: I suggest getting the zap gun and pack a punching it, the wave gun comes in handy in a plethora of situations, it is basically like having a wunderwaffe except with 28 shots in it, not to mention the 120 something electricity bullets you have. I would also suggest that you get Juggernaut, Stamina-up, Quick revive and Sleight of Hand, they are the most helpful out of all of the perks.

CAUTION: The astronaut will take your most recent perk from you if you get caught by him, along with being teleported away from your teammates, so try not to get caught by him, a good way to take him out is by shotguns or quantum grenades.

GERSH: Gersh devices also come in handy when you need to grab a max ammo and there are too many zombies or just when you need to revive someone who is amidst a mass of zombies. May I also say that gersh devices will transport you to a different part of the map if you walk into the black hole where all the zombies die at.

MORE SUGGESTIONS: If I were to make any more suggestions it would be that if you are in the position where you need to hack the last excavator for the achievement and you don't think you'll make it due to it being a high wave like wave 20 and up, send ALL players up to the hacker and run as fast as you can to the earth teleporter. If everyone is running fast enough, the person with the hacker should'nt go down due to lack of air and you should teleport to earth. Step back on the teleporter as soon as it will let you and go back to the moon. That way when you come back to the moon, there will be no zombies in the map for about 10 seconds and you will be in the start room and can hack the last excavator without worries of hordes of zombies coming behind you.

HACKER TRICKS: A couple other tricks that you may not know is that you can hack 500 points at a time to other players if they do not have many points but are in desperate need of a weapon or perk. Simply pick up the hacker and walk up to the player you wish to transfer points to and hold x until it gives your points to them, you need a minimum of 500 points or you cant transfer. Another thing is you can hack the random box 2 times every time it moves. Simply pay for a weapon and when the roulette stops take out the hacker and hack the weapon for 600 more points added on to the 950 you already spent, it will cycle through another roulette and give you a different gun, if you in fact hack that second weapon it will give you 950 points back and make the current roulette weapon available for any of the current players in the game to pick up.

NOTE: I will give an example. I BUY A GUN FROM RANDOM BOX (-950) IT IS A FAMAS. TAKE OUT HACK TOOL AND HACK THE FAMAS LIKE YOU HACK EVERYTHING ELSE (-600 MORE) WHICH IS (-1550 TOTAL). NOW THE ROULETTE CYCLES AGAIN. IT IS A RAY GUN THIS TIME, HACK THE RAY GUN. NOW YOU WILL GET 950 POINTS BACK (ONLY LOSING 600) AND MY TEAMMATES CAN PICK UP THE RAY GUN IF THEY WANTED. YOU CAN DO THIS WHOLE PROCESS TWICE FOR EACH TIME THE BOX MOVES.

Last but not least you can hack the weapon outlines on the walls. What this does is it makes regular weapon ammo 4500, or somewhere around there, and pack a punched ammo really cheap. Although hacking a weapon on a wall costs quite a few points, its up to you to decide if its worth those points. For example the steakout pack a punched ammo would be 750 points. The pack a punched steakout is a pretty good weapon up until round 20. Since it seems to be unclear, you cannot simply hack a weapon outline and then buy pack a punched ammo. Before you can actually buy the ammo off of the wall, you have to pack a punch (in this example the steakout) first on earth. Basically saying you cannot buy pack a punched ammo without having the pack a punched gun first.

If there is anything you think I forgot or anything that is unclear to you please leave a comment and I will fix it or make it more clear to you.

There are 9 comments relating to this Solution | Please log in to comment on this solution.

Achievement won on 25 Aug 11TA Score for this game: 3,110
Posted on 26 August 11 at 14:23, Edited on 07 September 11 at 01:07

This solution has 26 positive votes and 7 negative votes. Please log in to vote.

The other guides are helpful, but there seems to be some missing and conflicting information.

There are 3 excavators - Pi, Epsilon and Omicron. The excavators will only have a chance to activate once the power is restored, and aside from the round the power is turned on, will only activate at the beginning of a round.

If an excavator does activate, a woman's voice will come over the speaker system and say "Excavator XYZ is about to breach ABC". It will say this multiple times, following by warnings that say "about to breach in 60 seconds" and "about to breach in 30 seconds".

There are three spots that can be breached: Tunnel 6 (the purple corridors past the M14)Tunnel 11 (the hallways past the Olympia)Biodome (the dome near the teleporter to Area 51).

To get this achievement, you have to stop all 3 excavators, and it is random which one will activate. It is very possible that Pi will activate 3 times in a row, which means it may take several activations to actually have a chance to stop all 3. If you do this successfully, everyone in the game will get the achievement.

To actually stop an excavator prior to a breach, you must take the Hacker from the labs (the area just before the Biodome and teleporter to Area 51). There are 2 tables on each floor of the labs, and the Hacker will appear on one of them. If you drop the Hacker by picking up another PES, it will re-appear randomly at one of the 6 tables again.

Once you have the Hacker, take it to the starting area (running through the parts without oxygen like the power room and outside) and use it on the excavator terminal that has a blinking green light. There are three excavator terminals (these directions are entering from the door on Tunnel 6 side):One is left of the door after enteringOne is right of the door after enteringOne is on the opposite side of the room

The key to trying for this is to turn the power on ASAP, so you will have a chance as soon as possible for the excavators to activate. Be careful to not use explosives in the Receiving Area, because it will cause decompression and the person using the Hacker will not have air while they try to stop the excavator. It is still possible to stop them without air, but you have to be quick.

The final tip I would give is to know where the Hacker is at all times if you're not carrying it. Then, when you hear the warning at the beginning of a round, you will still have plenty of time to play out the round, make a crawler and quickly grab the Hacker to run back.

I hope this is helpful and helps provide all the information necessary.

EDIT: As mentioned elsewhere by other helpful posters, as long as you stop a certain excavator from breaching once, you can allow it to breach later in the same round. In other words, if you stopped Pi from breaching and it activates again, let it breach so you have better odds of getting the other two next time an activation occurs.

There is 1 comment relating to this Solution | Please log in to comment on this solution.

This solution has 22 positive votes and 3 negative votes. Please log in to vote.

Just to add a little strategy to this, assuming you already know what to do regarding the excavators from the above posts. In Solo I circled the area outside where the Mule Kick perk and AK47u is until I had enough points to Pack-a-Punch the starting pistol and buy the Flopper. Just keep circling this area purchasing more AK47u ammo when required. You'll hear the warning about the excavators at the start of any given round..usually every 3 or 4 rounds after you put the power on. When you hear the warning DONT get anxious. You have plenty of time! When you hear the warning dont kill any zombies, just round them up in this area until they stop spawning then go back through the labs, picking up the hacking tool on the way with the group following you. You will easily get far enough ahead of them for you to get back to start and hack the relevant console. The reason I suggest PaP the starting pistol is that its amazing for getting you out of trouble while circling in the Mule Kick/AK47u area. Hope this helps a little =D

There are 3 comments relating to this Solution | Please log in to comment on this solution.

Achievement won on 23 Aug 11TA Score for this game: 3,110
Posted on 24 August 11 at 01:32, Edited on 24 August 11 at 01:32

This solution has 26 positive votes and 8 negative votes. Please log in to vote.

Basically Play until you hear the warning of the excavators an as soon as you hear it run back to spawn where the quick revive is with the hacker which youll find on a desk in the room next to the pyramid(just go up the stairs right of the pyramid) . itll either be on the first floor 2nd floor or 3rd just check all floors until you come to it !

now your back at spawn ( where quick revive is ) theres 3 panels one of them will be flashing green this is the one you need to hack you cant miss it

an just do this until youve done all 3

tips: try not to hang around to long when you hear the warning , run straight to spawn dont forget the hacker and hack the panel whichever one is flashing green good luck :)

There are 11 comments relating to this Solution | Please log in to comment on this solution.

Achievement won on 20 Jun 12TA Score for this game: 3,110
Posted on 21 June 12 at 09:50, Edited on 21 June 12 at 13:49

This solution has 17 positive votes and 3 negative votes. Please log in to vote.

I recently got this achievement and had been trying for sometime with pretty good zombie players.

We had gotten to wave 23 or 27 you name it and we were having trouble with getting the right excavator to breach by this stage. We were letting them re breach and leaving them down but still no luck. But last night we ran a train down on earth a the beginning, we made sure no one died and we teleported to moon with enough points.

We played the first round in the spawn room and then had plenty of points to open up tunnel six and turn on the power and also the labs by the end of wave 2. For the first time ever the bio dome excavator was coming down on wave 3!! we always had the first excavator a wave 6-7.

Once this was hacked we got another at wave 6 and another at wave 12, there were all in order we didnt get any repeated excavators.

Not sure if this helps but the only things i noticed we had done differently were that everyone teleported to moon (no one died) and we had power on by wave 2 with doors open. I would suggest that if you are not getting an excavator by wave 3 to start again unless your very good at zombies as you will be looking at wave 25 upwards before the excavator you need to come down. Ps Biodome is your area to run a train!

There are 2 comments relating to this Solution | Please log in to comment on this solution.

This solution has 14 positive votes and 4 negative votes. Please log in to vote.

Some advice that I have is this:1. Get Gersh devices and ray gun/ MG2. Get Juggernaug and Staminup (and whatever else)3. HOLD IT DOWN IN THE BIO DOME!!!

Most people don't get the excavators to come quickly and if they do they repeat themselves, so stop it once then let them breach. If you want to use my method you need to keep the bio dome from being breached. You're also going to need to stay alive possibly into the round 20 somethings. What I did was to have the hacker in the bio dome and whenever something dropped like instadead, deathmachine, or whatever whoever has gersh devices needs to throw one and let whoever has the hacker hack the drop! It costs 5000$, but will turn into a max ammo every time!! This will constantly keep your gersh devices stocked and pack-a-punch weapons full! You can be pretty liberal with the gersh devices this way and kill A LOT of zombies easily. I got mine on solo. Doing this kept me alive long enough to stop them all and w/ some skill it will for you too!

Achievement won on 10 Sep 11TA Score for this game: 3,110
Posted on 10 September 11 at 02:01

This solution has 13 positive votes and 11 negative votes. Please log in to vote.

I got this by Level 11, 2 person co-op. All i did was (get lucky) but by level 2 end opened up the doors to the power room flipped it on, then next round got the excavator Biodome to come, then by level 6 PI came down, then Level 11 tunnel 11 came down!

interesting on how they came down on the lvl number they were.

My suggestion is RUSH the power room for the highest chance of getting them in the early rounds.

Hope this helps :)

There are 3 comments relating to this Solution | Please log in to comment on this solution.